Pioneer Times
by
Ellen Lyons
The lumbering industry was at its height in the eighties and nineties. The early lumbermen in Eland purchased logs from the farmers, acquired timberlands which they logged and sawed into lumber for local use and shipped to city markets. The mills are gone now, but traces remain. William Rideout, William Smerling and A. M. Smith were the first sawmill operators. The Wolfinger Box Factory manufactured cheese boxes and crates for a time. A shingle mill purchased basswood and cedar from the farmers. The resulting sawdust was used for fill. banking the houses, bedding for cattle and on the floor of Rettig's Meat Market.
In 1900, a drug store, barbershop, feed mill, hardware store, grocery, taverns, blacksmith shops, the Rideout Boarding House, hotels, creamery, cheese factory, Post office and the depot, all were destroyed in the great fire of 1913. Water was scarce. Volunteer firemen which included every able bodied person, fought the blaze until it was extinguished and everyone exhausted. The old pioneer spirit was not discouraged. They cleaned up the ruins and rebuilt a good part of it.
There were four hotels in Eland, and the boarding house owned by the Rideout Lumber Company. Hotel owners were: Pete McMorrow, Steve Glenn the Fuller House and the Shannen House. John Hoffman erected a hotel, which for over fifty years, served as headquarters for the railroad men and the traveling public. This hotel changed hands often. Mr. and Mrs. Henry Wolfinger owned it in the thirties. In 1945, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Thayer took possession and operated the hotel and bar the longest of any owner. They advertised as "The Home of the $1.00 T-Bone" and it became known far and wide. In 1967, Mr. Thayer became ill and depressed after the death of his son Thomas in Vietnam. Through sorrow he was unable to carryon. They moved to Hilbert, where Mr. Thayer died a few years later. Mrs. Thayer returned for a year then sold the hotel. It burned to the ground in 1971 and has never been rebuilt. Now there is no restaurant or lunch room in Eland.
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